As Engadget notes, almost 1 million people jailbroke their iOS device this weekend, after the release of Abstinthe 2.0. Considering I’m actually hearing more and more non-techie users talk about jailbreaking, this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
No surprise because for some reason, contrary to Apple’s thought processes, people actually want to be able to ‘own’ their phone.
In a world that is leaning more and more toward being one where you purchase a license to use a piece of software or hardware and don’t actually own it, people are trying their best to keep that feeling of ownership.
With the rumors going around that the next generation of game consoles are all going to be jailed and they will require a network connection just to play single player games..
Look at Diablo 3 as a perfect example of what NOT to do. The worse thing is though, even with the lack of offline LAN, and debacle of people not being able to log into it, people will still buy it up.
I guess the real surprise is that there aren’t more than 1 million iOS devices that were jailbroken!
I wouldn’t necessarily call it Apple’s thought process. More like their desire to own and control both their devices and their users.
Why support this awful company with their history of human rights abuses and their terrible walled garden? Why not support a more open company and buy some of the superior and cheaper Android alternatives?
Apple is losing this war the same way the lost the war against Windows in the 80s. Locking users in to crap they don’t want and disabling features and usability users do want. Also stealing other developers software and including in the Apple stable of software as an (often) inferior implementation.
Screw jailbreaking. Don’t buy the jail!
As soon as the ‘superior’ Android tablets get a port of this:
http://liine.net/en/products/lemur
– and this –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZcS204iRzc
– and this –
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/animoog/id471638724?mt=8
I’ll happily sell my iPad and trade it for an Android tablet.
Ideology will only get you so far. At the end of the day, it is (and always has been) about getting shit done. And let’s face it, iOS has the bigger and more varied selection of apps right now, unfortunately.
Edited 2012-05-29 00:54 UTC
We were “getting shit done” long before the iPad and its iApps showed up.
There may always be a better way, but we got a hell of a lot done before Apple figured out how to properly multitask.
Does that mean you use Windows on your laptop or desktop because it has the bigger and more varied selections of software right now, unfortunately?
Edited 2012-05-29 06:09 UTC
I use Windows on my MacBook Pro because Visual Studio, IIS and MS SQL Server only works with Windows. I use it in VirtualBox btw, but it’s still Windows..
You poor, poor thing, having to use those monstrocities.
Where should we send the sympathy cards and flowers?
🙂
I guess you only use them due to work, and that’s cool, I’ve been “forced” to use / support certain technologies too.
Right now I “have” to have Windows running in a virtual app just to make sure IE is supported. If I could get IE9 running in Wine I would be very happy, but so far that just doesn’t seem to work (if anyone has that working, let me know).
I like MS SQL Server by the way…
Yes, it’s because of work.
But I have to say that I enjoy programming in C# in Visual Studio 2010 with Entity Framework 4.
A bit more off topic stuff: I borrowed a MacBook Air power supply from a colleague one day. There was a flash-animation showing in a hidden tab in firefox in windows in virtualbox and the machine used more power than the power supply could give. At the start of the day I had 100% battery, and after about four hours I only had 60% left; with the power supply still plugged in…
I’m not going to follow your links but the type of projects I follow are only released on android. These tend to be special interest projects, those who don’t want apple messing with them.
The fun part here is that android is absolutely utterly dominating the market in places like china. Of course the software developed there is totally unusable for those of us using sane, modern concepts like alphabets.
I believe that is one of the most racist things I’ve ever read on this site.
I’m actually considering buying one of those “language impaired” tablets. Under $100 for a 1.2GHz capacitive touchscreen tablet that can also boot Linux-ARM? It’s a no-brainer!
Many thanks to WereCatf for the heads up on the source for those tablets.
Furthermore, I can entertain the possibility that the Chinese writing system is actually superior, when it comes to smallish digital devices (generally small displays, or when you want to cram large amount of info into limited space) – seems like it tends to be somewhat more compact: with syllables represented, IIRC, by one character each, and characters (syllables!) larger in vertical than in horizontal dimension, it looks like words have a greater chance of matching the typical ~square form of icons (greater chance than our “thin” horizontal lines of characters).
So for example, a relatively large icon can more easily include a word, it can be a stylised word (vs. acrobatics with tiny text under an icon).
I wonder how widespread it already is, if their Android variants will go in such stylistic direction.
(quickly checking out one linked here, which I could rapidly find in browser history: http://beat.baidu.com/?p=5209 …well, there is one such icon, not very stylised, on 3rd photo)
Edited 2012-05-29 22:42 UTC
What good is “getting shit done” if you enslave yourself to do it?